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Russia caught presenting own Kursk losses as Ukrainian defeats, OSINT analysis shows

Russian losses are repurposed as Ukrainian defeats, a single damaged Challenger tank is spun into multiple victories, and old footage is rebranded as new losses—Russian propaganda accounts reached millions with fabricated evidence of Ukrainian setbacks.
byYevheniia Martyniuk
30/01/2025
5 minute read
Russia caught presenting own Kursk losses as Ukrainian defeats, OSINT analysis shows

On 4 January, as Ukraine’s forces commenced an offensive operation in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, GeoConfirmed made a revealing discovery. The open-source intelligence collective, which has monitored the war for nearly three years, identified a consistent pattern: whenever Ukraine launches significant operations, pro-Russian social media accounts flood platforms with claims of Ukrainian military catastrophe.

The choreography of this information warfare has become almost balletic in its predictability: each Ukrainian advance triggers a counter-offensive of pixels and posts, where defeat is constructed through a careful assemblage of misattributed footage, temporal sleight-of-hand, and—in a twist that might seem too obvious for fiction—the occasional repurposing of Russia’s own losses as Ukrainian ones.

This January’s performance featured two principal players: @NewRulesGeo, whose thread pirouetted through X (formerly Twitter) to capture an astonishing four million views, and North Wind, a Telegram channel with supposed ties to the Russian military, whose production drew an audience of nearly one hundred thousand.

When unspooled by GeoConfirmed’s analysts, their narratives revealed the artisanal craft behind modern military disinformation.

@NewRulesGeo, despite its name suggesting geographical expertise, showed little regard for accuracy. They mixed recent footage from Kursk with unrelated old videos, and repeatedly used footage of the same destroyed vehicle while claiming each instance was a different Ukrainian loss.

North Wind went even further in their deception: they presented Russian vehicles destroyed in mid-December as Ukrainian losses from the recent offensive.

“We prefer not to invest too much time in debunking disinformation, as a lie can be made in just a few minutes, but the debunking can cost you days,” the investigators noted. This particular fact-check took several days and required the effort of dedicated volunteers performing detailed geolocation work.

Old Russian losses repackaged as Ukrainian defeats

North Wind’s deception comes into sharp focus through its narrative about the village of Berdin in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. It painted a dramatic scene of Ukrainian armored columns meeting swift destruction, complete with claims of successful strikes by Russian FPV drones, Lancet munitions, and artillery.

Their video, meant as evidence of Ukrainian losses, instead revealed an embarrassing error:

The destroyed vehicles shown from timestamp 0:29 were actually Russian armor decimated during their own failed December offensive.

The proof is twofold:

  • geolocation places these wrecks near Liubimovka, not Berdin, where North Wind claimed the battle occurred
Green circle: Russian losses mid-December.
Blue arrows: Ukrainian offensive operations which started 4 January 2025.
Photo: GeoConfirmed
  • Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade published the footage on 17 December 2024, weeks before the current offensive began. In their eagerness to construct a narrative of Ukrainian defeat, North Wind inadvertently documented their own losses.

Recycled tanks and blurry videos

While North Wind relied on blatant misattribution of losses, @NewRulesGeopolitics employed a more sophisticated array of deceptive techniques. As a result, their thread on X amassed nearly four million views across 15 posts.

When analyzed, their deceptive tactics fell into three clear patterns.

  • Multiple claims from single incidents: They repeatedly used footage of the same British Challenger tank being hit by Russian drones to claim separate vehicle losses.

    “A $4.9 million British Challenger tank destroyed by Russian FPV drone,” claimed one post, adding video.

    “Another Russian drone hit against a British Challenger tank,” declared another, also adding a video.

    In reality, analysts confirmed this was the same vehicle, attacked multiple times, with unclear damage—and notably, geolocation placed it 6 to 13 kilometers away from any Ukrainian offensive operations.

    • Recycling old and unrelated footage: They presented footage of a Ukrainian tank’s destruction as evidence of the current offensive’s failure.

    “Russian drone operators CHEER as they watch a Ukrainian T-72 tank in Kursk go KABOOM,” claimed one post. 

    However, this incident occurred earlier in the village of Makhnovka, Kursk Oblast, during a Russian offensive, far from the current battlefield. The footage was published before the start of the Ukrainian operation, and the tank was not T-72, but T-64BV.

    “Destroyed/abandoned Ukrainian armoured vehicle in Kursk. Russian soldier filming notes that there are eight Ukrainian dead bodies nearby,” another post said.

    In this case, they repurposed footage of an armored vehicle from August 2024, presenting it as a fresh Ukrainian loss.

    • Using unclear and unverifiable footage: Their thread relied heavily on poor-quality videos that made verification impossible.

    “Russian drone operators MURK American Stryker vehicle in Kursk,” one post claimed. However, the used footage was too grainy to confirm.

    Another described Ukrainian troops under drone attack during a medical evacuation near the village of Pogrebki: “Ukrainian troops try to evacuate wounded comrades in Kursk. Russian drone spots them and HUNTS THEM DOWN,” though the outcome remained unclear. These vague videos allowed them to make bold claims without the possibility of verification.

    Through these methods, they constructed a false narrative of Ukrainian military failure, built entirely on misattributed, recycled, and unverifiable content.

    Hybrid disinformation strategy

    These battlefield deception techniques aren’t limited to immediate combat reports. On 17 January, Russian propagandists launched another sophisticated operation built around a real event: the strike on Kryvyi Rih’s Professional College of National Aviation University. From this factual foundation, they fabricated the death of a Danish F-16 instructor—a story that couldn’t even maintain consistency in the victim’s name, variously spelled as Jepp Hansen, Jeppe Hansen, Jepp Hanssen, or Jeppe Hanssen.

    The operation followed a calculated playbook: small accounts seeded the initial story, TASS—the Russian state news agency—provided it with a veneer of legitimacy, and larger accounts known for amplifying Russian narratives spread it further.

    The story’s artificial nature revealed itself through AI-generated images, name inconsistencies, and suspicious accounts suddenly emerging with detailed “insider” information.

    The fabrication was so blatant it prompted Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen to issue a direct rebuttal on 19 January.

    “No Danish soldiers have been killed in Ukraine. It is a false story that is being circulated in Russian media – probably to discredit Denmark,” he said unequivocally.

    This episode demonstrates how Russian disinformation operations anchor their narratives in verifiable events, using real incidents as a foundation for elaborate fictions designed to influence Western public opinion and pressure Ukraine’s international supporters.

    Question mark technique 

    A more subtle form of disinformation emerged through accounts like Lord Bebo’s, who deployed what analysts call the “question mark technique.” By framing false narratives as questions rather than statements, propagandists maintain plausible deniability while still spreading disinformation.

    “Just asking questions” about the Danish instructor’s death allowed them to plant seeds of doubt without taking responsibility for the false claim.

    This technique serves multiple purposes: it suggests controversial claims while avoiding direct responsibility, creates speculation, and allows propagandists to claim they were merely seeking information—all while spreading the same false narrative. Combined with the hybrid strategy of mixing real events with fabrications, it creates a particularly effective form of disinformation that can force government officials to publicly debunk entirely manufactured stories.

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